A stroke of luck: lifesavers

Boyfriend’s quick thinking and modern medicine were key

Claire Cordua, 19, experienced a massive stroke in July, while driving to the beach with her boyfriend, Chris Price, 18. Price is credited with saving her life by steering the car to safety, narrowly missing a collision with oncoming traffic, and then calling for medical help. A medical procedure to remove the clot in her brain was also a critical part of her recovery. She starts college this week in Tennessee.
— David Brooks / UNION-TRIBUNE

Claire Cordua, 19, experienced a massive stroke in July, while driving to the beach with her boyfriend, Chris Price, 18. Price is credited with saving her life by steering the car to safety, narrowly missing a collision with oncoming traffic, and then calling for medical help. A medical procedure to remove the clot in her brain was also a critical part of her recovery. She starts college this week in Tennessee.
— David Brooks / UNION-TRIBUNE

As 19-year-old Claire Cordua went off to college in Tennessee on Friday, she and her family experienced the usual “freshman butterflies” — minor anxieties about new classes, dorm life and being so far from home. However, after recently surviving a terrifying medical ordeal during which she came within a few short hours of losing her life, college should be a day at the beach for the courageous teenager.

Last July, while driving to the beach, the vibrant high school volleyball star suffered a massive stroke. Although a stroke in such a young and healthy person is extremely rare, when Cordua started losing consciousness, slurring her speech, and losing control of her muscles and consequently the operation of the car, her boyfriend instinctively understood the problem.

“I recognized the symptoms. Her speech became incomprehensible, half of her face was drooping and she was passing out. I put it all together and I knew she was having a stroke,” says Chris Price, 18, a senior at Westview High School in Rancho Peñasquitos, the same school Cordua graduated from in June.

From the passenger’s side, Price grabbed the steering wheel to avoid slamming into the car in front of them. This sent their car up and over the median, heading directly into oncoming traffic. With horns blaring and brakes squealing all around them, he skillfully steered the car back onto the middle of the median and called 911.

Fortunately, a fire station was just down the block, and paramedics arrived within minutes. But, the danger was not over for Cordua. She needed immediate intervention to prevent the blood clot in her brain from causing permanent damage or death.

She was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, where neurologists tried to administer clot-busting drugs with no success. Dr. Giuseppe Ammirati, a neurointerventional radiologist brand new to the hospital, was called in to perform a minimally invasive procedure using a tiny catheter and X-ray guidance to reach the problem in Cordua’s brain.

With the clock ticking and only a seven-hour window of opportunity to surgically remove the blood clot, Ammirati inserted a catheter through a tiny incision at the groin. The catheter was threaded through the femoral artery in her leg all the way to the tiny arteries in her brain. Once on target, the doctor placed a clot-busting drug directly on the clot and broke it up mechanically.

“I didn’t even have to get my hair shaved. I know it’s silly, but that was one of my biggest worries,” says Cordua, whose long, blond hair spills softly over her shoulders.

After a little more than two weeks of intensive hospitalization, followed by several months of physical therapy, Cordua shows almost no evidence of the stroke that nearly killed her.

“I still have just a little weakness on my left side. I have to kind of pull my left arm around when I swim because it’s a little slower than the right. But the more I push, the better it gets,” she says optimistically.

Doctors attribute her stroke to several things, none of which she or her parents were aware.

Cordua has thrombophilia, a disorder in which the blood clots easily or excessively. Because nobody knew about her condition, she took no precautions when she flew cross-country a couple of times last summer, one flight just days before her stroke.

It’s believed that a clot formed in her leg while she sat immobile for hours on the plane and later moved to her brain. Doctors also discovered that Cordua has a hole in her heart, called patent foramen ovale (PFO), which put her at an increased risk for a stroke. Although about one-quarter of the general population has PFO with no symptoms, the condition is associated with about 40 percent of people who have a stroke, especially those younger than 55.

With mixed feelings, she postponed starting college until this month.

“I was sad when I couldn’t go to college last fall as I had planned. But, I know I would have had problems because of the shape I was in then. I needed to rest and regain my strength,” says Cordua, who was awarded an academic scholarship to Rhodes College in Memphis, where she plans to play volleyball. “Being at home these months and taking a break from school and sports has been good for me, but I’ve really missed it. Especially playing volleyball.”

Cordua’s health crisis helped her form goals. She plans on majoring in art therapy or physical therapy.

“I’ve always wanted to do something that would help people. After going through what I went through, and seeing how therapy helped me, I think that helping someone who can’t walk to walk again would be a very rewarding job,” Cordua says.

Although doctors have cleared Cordua to play volleyball in college, they’ve cautioned her to pace herself and not take on too much too soon.

“I used to run around like crazy. I was always on the go. But now I know I have to take time to relax,” she says.

Her mother knows it won’t be easy for her energetic daughter to slow down, but she’s confident that the college freshman is responsible and smart enough to monitor her own health while away at school.

“In a funny kind of way, Claire has really grown because of all that’s happened, and she’s shown such remarkable strength. Everything that she’s about to face at college can’t compare to what she’s already been through,” says her mother, Shelley Boyd.

Her near-death experience six months ago has given Cordua a new appreciation for life and the people around her, particularly her boyfriend.

“I owe Chris my life. If he had not been so quick-thinking, we would have crashed,” she says. “And, if he had not been with me and I had survived a car crash, nobody would have known I had a stroke and they might not have treated me (promptly), and I would be affected permanently.”

Price, who was a Boy Scout for more than five years, will receive the Honor Medal with Crossed Palms from the Boy Scouts of America for his act of heroism in “saving life at extreme risk to self.”

What better way to make a good impression on a girlfriend’s parents than to save their daughter’s life?

“In my opinion, Chris can do no wrong,” Boyd says. “Every time I see him, I give him a big hug and call him Superman.”